Your one stop place for up-to-the-minute fantasy baseball and fantasy football news along with analysis and rankings all year long. You wont find a better fantasy sports site anywhere. Also on Twitter at RotoBoss.

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

LIKE THE FANTASY SPORTS BOSS ON FACEBOOOK

Sunday, March 11, 2018

So a year ago at this time I went on a personal mission to tell you all not to fall into the Jonathan Villar trap. Coming of a monstrous 2016 campaign that saw him hit 19 home runs, swipe 62 bases, and bat .285, everyone wanted a piece of Villar in drafts last spring. This casued his ADP to move into the third round and even into the late second which yours truly thought was absurd. So once again while everyone dodged, I weaved when it came to reacting to Villar and for good reason. I had pointed out at the time that while Villar's surface numbers were tremendous, underneath the statistical hood there was trouble. The biggest red flag as Villar's penchant to swing at everything and miss often as shown by his ugly 25.6 K/9 rate in 2016. I also made note of Villar's insanely lucky .360 BABIP which was going to make hitting .284 again very tough. Combined together, I wanted no part of Villar and suggested you all follow my lead.

Fast forward to the end of 2017 and I was proven to be right on point there as Villar was simply a gigantic bust. The average sank as predicted all the way down to .241 and Villar's K/9 rate was brutal at an unfathomable 30.3. Throw in just 11 homers and a major drop in steals to 23 and Villar went KA-BOOM! So with all that said, why is the title not "Jonathan Villar: 2018 Fantasy Baseball Bust" for the second year in a row? Well it's all about the price. With an ADP of 196 as of this writing, Villar is a complete after-thought for 2018 fantasy baseball and so now all of a sudden he actually represents a good buying opportunity. Just like I did with former enemy Mark Trumbo prior to 2016 when he hit all those home runs for the Baltimore Orioles at a dirt cheap price, I will now say that Villar looks like a decent late-round investment. After all, the guy can still run and has some pop. If he stays healthy, a 15/30 seasons is very likely; along with a decent array of runs and RBI. The average will likely remain quite ugly but guys with big speed like Villar could get enough BABIP luck to not make that number gross. So in essence, Villar has flipped the fantasy baseball investment switch based on his ADP number.

When you put it all together, Jonathan Villar looks like a good gamble in the late rounds as someone with quite a bit of tools to offer his owners. The average again is going to be nasty but the power/speed game is still there as Villar is just 27. Since you are not going to be investing much, the payoff is worth it.